Snowflake's Forum

  Should the Public See What Gunshots Really Do to Bodies? THINK ABOUT IT. The Uvalde shooting has rekindled a long-running debate in the news media What do high-velocity rounds from an AR-15 do to a child's body, and should the public see it? Last week's mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has rekindled a debate about whether publishing graphic images might prompt more urgent, meaningful action. As the  New York Times   reports, families and the media asked the same question after Sandy Hook, and the core ethical issue is almost as old as photography itself. The famous photo of " Whipped Peter " helped spur outrage over slavery in 1863, and Nick Ut's 1972 photo "Napalm Girl" (above) altered perceptions of the Vietnam War, but both images also shocked the public at the time. "It is true that shocking photos of suffering occasionally do make an imprint," Bruce Shapiro of Columbia University told the  Times,  but it’s a tough ethical predicament beca...

  Peter Taylor   • Here's another one for you. It requires an intro story: Late one Saturday night I was making a flight booking online. It was a long process involving lots of decisions and choices. Finally I reached the point of payment. I entered all the card details and hit 'Pay'. It took me to my banking site where I needed to fill in a one-time pin. I waited for my mobile to ping and then entered the pin provided. The page went blank and up popped a message "Error 502: Bad gateway". There was no way back, no way forward and no indication as to whether the payment had gone through or not. Now I had a problem. Should I reload the browser and make a new booking? But what if the old booking had been successful and paid for? I phoned the credit card hotline. A very nice young lady answered and I told her my tale of woe. I asked if she could just tell me whether or not the payment had gone through. "No problem, Sir, but first I must ask you four security ques...

By   André Pratte  Ten days ago, I climbed the long stairs towards Lincoln’s imposing statue, the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Once I had made it to the top, I was immediately struck by the silence, the calm that reigned around the monument, even though there were, as usual, many visitors. No one talked on the phone, no one yelled at a child, no one made remarks out loud. You could sense the respect that the tourists, mostly Americans, felt towards the great man. Indeed, as inscribed over the head of the marble statue, “in the hearts of the people (…) the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.” On the north wall of the monument, one can read the late president’s Second Inaugural Address. On the south wall, the remarkably short Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago …” In Gettysburg, Lincoln worried that the United States might not survive the Civil War. One wonders what he would think today of the state of this great nation that he saved from the...

 There are thousands of mites living on your face Just made your Sunday, didn't I ?   😏 Meet Demodex, the face mite, a microscopic arachnid that lives on human skin. The pore is its humble abode and the waxy sebum we secrete is its meal of choice. Enjoy the video: https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/origins?vpid=p0c4238q Demodex mites are microscopic eight-legged organisms found primarily in the sebaceous and hair follicle glands of your face. You can scrub your face as much as you want, but it’s pretty much impossible to get rid of them. Demodex mites typically come out at night when you’re asleep so they can feast on your dead skin cells before retreating to their hiding spots to lay eggs.   https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/what-are-demodex-mites Just made your

  Wisconsin man Don Gorske has only had 8 Macless days since 1972 (NEWSER)  – Wisconsin man Don Gorske has marked a milestone in unadventurous eating that may never be equaled. He visited his local McDonald's in Fond du Lac on Tuesday to mark 50 years of eating Big Macs almost every day. "All through life here, a lot of people said, 'You’ll be dead before you reach 50 years of eating Big Macs.' I guess I proved them wrong," Gorske said, per  KCRG . Gorske had his first Big Mac in the same restaurant on May 17, 1972 and has only had eight Macless days since, including the day his mother died and the day a snowstorm forced the restaurant to close, reports  Fox 11 . He now keeps a few emergency Big Macs in his freezer. Gorske, a retired corrections officer, says he has eaten Big Macs in all 50 states and Canada. The 68-year-old normally eats two Big Macs a day, which he says accounts for more than 90% of the food he consumes. He usually has a Coke with his burgers, b...

ImperatorMachinarum   • I've got another controversial one: do non-religious people have more intelligence, tolerance, morality, and virtue than religious people? Preamble: There are various degrees of being religious. From literalism to contextualism to simply being a mark of rite, ritual, and identity. But I often come across atheists or self described secular humanist rationalists assert superiority over allegedly backwards, less enlightened religious folks. Of course I also hear religious folks assert the same over the non-religious, even members of other religion. As always, there are nuances. Debate it. Please!   Religious categories abound.   Rather than pull definitions, I will leave it up to you to Google those mentioned, if need be, and interpret as you will. Give IM and the rest of us your thoughts on the correlation between religion and intelligence, tolerance, morality, and virtue. And thanks for favoriting and supporting the thread! (pos...

  Did you have a savings account as a kid? For several years in a row, I had one of those kinds that was a booklet, called something like a "Christmas Club Savings Book," where you went to the bank with your mom or dad and gave the teller 50¢ of your hard-earned "chores money," and she’d (yes it was always a she, like telephone operators) would tear out the next coupon and stamp the receipt part left in the booklet.   It make you feel grown up, and at the end, if you were committed enough to keep it up, you had something like $25 to buy presents.  Even if you never made it to the last coupon in the booklet, you still had a pretty tidy sum (for a kid) to work with, as you anxiously awaited that December check from the bank, made out in YOUR NAME!  😱 I remember one Christmas I had my eye on a gigantic box of chocolates for my mom.   Now, granted, that was just me channeling myself, knowing I’d benefit too.  😁 So, here are some questions : -Did ...

 I wish I could take credit for the following but someone showed me this and I thought it would be cool to share it: THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa . Half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally Beautiful! Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe. Well developed and open to trade, especially for someone of real value. Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain. Very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty. Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece. Gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit. Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain. With a glorious and all conquering past. Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel. Has been through war, doesn't make the same mistakes twice, and takes care of business . Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada. Self-preserving, but open to meeting new people. After 70, she becomes Tibet. Wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages. An adventurous spirit and...

  Dan T   • Are life, consciousness, and intelligence intrinsic to the universe, or something that just happened by chance?     To be on the same page, let’s use Webster’s definition of intrinsic: adjective being a part of the innermost nature of a person or thing built-in, essential, hardwired, inborn, ingrained, integral, native, natural   Give Dan and the rest of us your thoughts on this philosophical subject. And thanks for favoriting and supporting the thread! 😊 (posted by PrimalSoup)

 Is there ANY point in posting a thread about this? WE KNOW nothing will change. This is now the price we are "willing to pay" to live in a country where we have a "right" to own firearms. In fact, listening to Fox yesterday, the Right have dropped the phrase "thoughts and prayers" and have a new tactic: They are now claiming that the Left and the MSM are using every mass shooting to promote anti-gun, to take away YOUR guns, to restrict firearms, to take away YOUR 2nd amendment rights. The irony: THEY are using the tragedy of mass shootings to further their pro-gun agenda and to raise the ire of gun owners by claiming (falsely) that the Left are coming to take your guns away. Is there any point, because clearly THEY aren't listening or don't care, in pointing out the obvious? Such as: America’s unique gun violence problem, explained in 16 maps and charts In the developed world, these levels of gun violence are a uniquely American problem. Here’s wh...

  There's a simple solution to tough debates — give everyone what they want. By  Milt Policzer Courthouse News columnist; racehorse owner and breeder; one of those guys who always got picked last. Sometimes seemingly impossible problems have simple tried-and-true solutions. Take the debate over what should be taught in school. People who want history ignored in classrooms insist parents should have the right to decide what gets taught. The problem with that, obviously, is that other parents will want different things taught. The parents screeching at school board meetings don’t represent the quiet, horrified parents. So how can a school possibly comply with most parents’ educational choices? Easy: segregation. It’s an undervalued part of educational history. I don’t mean divide races or create separate schools. All you have to do is offer alternative courses. Right-wing parents could sign their kid up for Sanitized History. Left-wing parents could sign their kid up for Guilty ...

 We're drenched in media these days.  More television than we could have dreamt of in our youth.  Music you can pluck from the air.  Toys and tchotchkes of every description.  The trick is finding the stuff you'll like.  It's not easy! In the old days, these things were curated for you.  If it didn't get on the radio, you never heard of it.  There were a very limited number of television channels with new material -- and even those spent half their time on "re-runs" and syndicated shows.  Even stuff like comics depended on only a few publishers. But now?  Now, we're inundated!  And there's so much terrific stuff out there!  So much you'll never hear about unless you're lucky! So let's share some of our discoveries, eh?  Here's mine:  a little-known graphic novel, first published in the 1980s, which flopped magnificently.  A delightful tale of a totally talentless, overweight, clueless boor who conquers the entert...

  MMW   • [S2E13] I wish I knew the answer to: Is there a supernatural?   Webster defines supernatural as: su·​per·​nat·​u·​ral | \  ˌ s ü -p ə r- ˈ na-ch ə -r ə l Definition of supernatural 1: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe especially: of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil 2a: departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b: attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)   A lot of angles to approach this from.   Pick an angle, any angle (Gods, ghosts, invisible universes, realms, abnormalities, anomalies, seemingly law-defying phenomena, etc.). Give MMW and the rest of us your thoughts on this fascinating subject. And thanks for favoriting and supporting the thread! (posted by PrimalSoup)

  A decade ago, the GOP recognized that it needed to diversify to win. Now, many of its members are implicitly defending a conspiracy theory aimed at keeping non-whites from the country entirely. No one was harder on Republicans' lack of outreach to minority communities, and the party's accompanying losses at the polls, than the GOP itself. In a brutally frank self-examination, the party concluded in a 100-page " autopsy " of the 2012 election that it was focusing too much attention on white, Christian, straight Americans, ignoring the demographic changes that threatened to make an unchanged GOP irrelevant. "If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy," the 2013 report warned. "If Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us ...